On Tuesday morning in Helsinki almost nothing could be seen of the 10,000 or so Eintracht fans who will accompany their team to the Supercup. Especially not in comparison to the scenes of Barcelona and Seville, the Spanish landmarks of last season’s Europa League triumph. On the Kauppatori, Helsinki’s central market, everything went on as usual in bright sunshine. By the way, the market is definitely worth seeing.
This also applies to a Frankfurt professional, who will be missing this time. On Tuesday morning it became increasingly clear that Filip Kostic, 29, was depriving himself of the theoretical opportunity to take a look at the finely breaded fish. The Serb was still present at Eintracht’s final training session – but a few minutes after the end of the training session, the club announced that Kostic had been released from the trip to Finland.
“We are currently in promising talks with another club and a solution is emerging,” said sporting director Markus Krösche: “We have always said that we would not put any obstacles in Filip’s path if we had an offer that was good for all sides and that we were ready to talk are.” Because Kostic’s behavior and performance were impeccable, especially in the past year.
Kostic is set to take the place of Álvaro Morata at Juventus
Juventus Turin had made the offer, and it was reportedly improved significantly. In Italy it was heard that the base fee was 14 million euros, but bonus payments could increase this amount to a total of up to 17 million euros. The improvement should also please Hamburger SV, who brought the winger from Stuttgart in 2016 and were assured when Kostic was transferred to Frankfurt (2018) that they would participate financially in a resale.
Kostic, who can look back on a total of 249 Bundesliga games and 35 goals and was expected in Turin on Tuesday evening to finalize contract talks, is to take the place at Juventus that was vacated by Spanish international striker Álvaro Morata. Morata was last loaned to Juve from Atlético Madrid – and was already (like Kostic) on the left wing if he didn’t get a chance in the center of the storm.
Regardless of the fact that Kostic has almost left, Eintracht is looking forward to the first competitive match with Real Madrid since the legendary 3:7 in the European Cup of 1960. Despite the debacle at the start of the Bundesliga against Bayern Munich (1:6) ? Yes: “We have the chance to do better now,” said coach Oliver Glasner.
